GUILTY KS - Arlan & Linda Kaufman for enslaving mentally ill, Potwin, 1999

Arlan and Linda Kaufman appeared in U.S. District Court in Wichita with their ankles in shackles Wednesday as prosecutors announced that the couple was being charged with forcing mentally ill people into involuntary servitude -- slavery.

Federal Magistrate Judge Donald Bostwick ordered the Newton couple held without bond while authorities continued to investigate the bizarre case.

The charges stem from a 1999 incident in which people in the Kaufmans' care were found on a Potwin-area farm doing chores in the nude.

According to a federal affidavit made public Wednesday, an investigator for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the Kaufmans used a stun gun on one of the people under their care, discouraged residents of their group homes from contacting family and friends, and controlled their medications and finances.

But according to an Eagle review of federal, state and county records, authorities knew as early as 1999 that something was wrong with how the Kaufmans were running their group homes for mentally ill people. Serious allegations of sexual, emotional and physical abuse have surfaced in government documents since 2001.

Rocky Nichols, executive director of Kansas Advocacy and Protective Services, a federally funded organization charged with protecting the rights of adults with mental and physical disabilities, contends that state officials were aware of the situation as early as 2000 but failed to act.

"You read through this stuff, and it's gut-wrenching," he said. "How did this happen? How did it get so bad?"


http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/local/10033887.htm

From outward appearances, Arlan and Linda Kaufman were devout members of the Mennonite community in Newton, Kan., dividing their time between church and the group home for disabled persons that they operated.

But federal prosecutors in Kansas say the therapy sessions, recreational and vocational services that the couple claimed to provide had a perverse subtext.

The Kaufmans are accused of a variety of abusive acts, including forcing the residents to mend barbed wire in the nude and videotaping them as they shaved each other's genitals.

After years of investigation, the couple was indicted in 2004 on 34 federal counts of forced labor, involuntary servitude, health care and mail fraud, obstruction of a federal audit and conspiracy over 24 years.
http://www.courttv.com/trials/news/0905/30_kaufmans_ctv.html

I have started a thread on this in Trials.

From outward appearances, Arlan and Linda Kaufman were devout members of the Mennonite community in Newton, Kan., dividing their time between church and the group home for disabled persons that they operated.

But federal prosecutors in Kansas say the therapy sessions, recreational and vocational services that the couple claimed to provide had a perverse subtext.

A 42-page indictment alleges that the defendants "purported to provide care and therapy to mentally ill adults, but in truth and fact, subjected the residents to serious harm," including sexual and psychological abuse, forced and prolonged nudity, isolation and coercion, and creating a climate of fear that prevented anyone from coming forward.

Furthermore, the indictment alleges that the defendants filed false medical claims that made the Kaufman House the highest claimant in the state of Kansas for medical services they allegedly rendered.

Lawyers on both sides declined to comment, but court documents indicate that the defendants stand firm in their conviction that however unorthodox their methods may sound, they were valid and necessary means of therapy.

Lawyers for Arlan Kaufman have suggested their client may testify to that effect. If so, he may also have to account for why, as the indictment charges, the couple videotaped the residents massaging, masturbating and shaving each other, and sometimes Arlan, in the nude, and attempted to sell the footage to a nudist organization
http://www.courttv.com/trials/news/0905/30_kaufmans_ctv.html

mysteriew said:

From outward appearances, Arlan and Linda Kaufman were devout members of the Mennonite community in Newton, Kan., dividing their time between church and the group home for disabled persons that they operated.

But federal prosecutors in Kansas say the therapy sessions, recreational and vocational services that the couple claimed to provide had a perverse subtext.

A 42-page indictment alleges that the defendants "purported to provide care and therapy to mentally ill adults, but in truth and fact, subjected the residents to serious harm," including sexual and psychological abuse, forced and prolonged nudity, isolation and coercion, and creating a climate of fear that prevented anyone from coming forward.

Furthermore, the indictment alleges that the defendants filed false medical claims that made the Kaufman House the highest claimant in the state of Kansas for medical services they allegedly rendered.

Lawyers on both sides declined to comment, but court documents indicate that the defendants stand firm in their conviction that however unorthodox their methods may sound, they were valid and necessary means of therapy.

Lawyers for Arlan Kaufman have suggested their client may testify to that effect. If so, he may also have to account for why, as the indictment charges, the couple videotaped the residents massaging, masturbating and shaving each other, and sometimes Arlan, in the nude, and attempted to sell the footage to a nudist organization
http://www.courttv.com/trials/news/0905/30_kaufmans_ctv.html

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So sick! As if being mentally Ill isn't awful in and of itself..but the place these people were sent to get help from.. forces these ILL things on these poor ill people.
Makes ya wonder who the "ill" ones really are, hmm.

I seem to recall an odd "advertsment"f or a TV program.

The more respectable a person "seems" the more they feel they can get away with because no one would suspect them because they are so "respectable".

This case certainly proves that point..........

What qualifications did the Kaufman's have that enabled them to have these victims placed in their care?

Kansas couple on trial for enslaving mentally ill


KANSAS CITY, Kansas (Reuters) - A Kansas husband and wife who ran a psychotherapy practice went on trial on Tuesday on charges that they kept mentally ill people as slaves, forced them to perform sex acts on videotape and then billed Medicare nearly $1 million for the "therapy."

Prosecutors charged that Arlan Kaufman, 68, and his wife Linda Kaufman, 62, spent 18 years taking advantage of patients entrusted to their care. The couple ran a residential care facility in Newton, Kansas, where they worked with at least 20 mentally ill individuals from 1980 until 2004.

Jury selection began Tuesday for an expected five-week trial in U.S. District Court in Wichita.

Authorities are seeking to prove that while the couple was billing relatives and insurers for therapy, rent, utilities and food, they were forcing the residents to engage in hard manual labor in the nude on a farm the couple owned outside of town.

Prosecutors charged the residents were also forced to engage in a variety of sexually explicit acts, including masturbating, fondling each other and shaving each other's genitals, much of which was videotaped.

Patients were physically injured or restrained if they resisted, authorities charged.

Prosecutors have filed 33 criminal counts against the Kaufmans including charges of forced labor, involuntary servitude, health care fraud, mail fraud and obstruction of a federal audit.


Link

Lawyers began presenting opening statements this afternoon in the the federal trial of Arlan and Linda Kaufman.

The prosecution alleged that the Kaufmans sexually abused residents in their two group homes. Defense attorneys said Arlan Kaufman was providing legitimate therapy, trying to help delusional patients control outlandish sexual behavior.

The prosecution also claimed that the Kaufmans fraudulently billed Medicare more than $216,000.

A jury of seven women and five men was sworn in this afternoon. Two women will be alternates.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot is presiding.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/12824580.htm

Jurors in the federal trial of Arlan and Linda Kaufman are learning about psychotherapy from a Kansas City, Mo., who trains therapists.

Bonnie Buchele is director of the Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute. She testified this morning about the power and influence that therapists can wield over their clients.

The Kaufmans are on trial for 33 charges, including making sexual servants of the residents who lived in their two Newton group homes and for Medicare fraud.

Their defense is that they were conducting legitimate therapy with residents suffering from schizophrenia. Some of the therapy sessions included residents being naked and videos taken by Arlan Kaufman have shown people in various intimate activities.

Buchele said such sessions are inappropriate and unethical.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/12902842.htm

The married owners of a group home for the mentally ill were convicted Monday of enslaving its residents, forcing them to work naked and perform sex acts, and illegally billing their families and the federal government for therapy.

Arlan Kaufman, 69, and his wife, Linda, 62, were convicted of 30 federal charges, including health care fraud, Medicare fraud, forced labor and holding clients in involuntary servitude at the Kaufman House Residential Treatment Center. Arlan Kaufman also was found guilty of making a false representation.

The convictions could put the two in prison for the rest of their lives.

The couple showed little emotion but briefly hugged and kissed before being led from the courtroom to jail. The jury is to return Tuesday to hear arguments on the prosecution's request the couple forfeit $289,727.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051108...icn7RGs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-

From January 2006:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-24-enslavedsentence_x.htm

Arlan Kaufman, 69, was sentenced to 30 years and his wife, Linda, was sentenced to seven years in prison. Federal jurors found Arlan Kaufman guilty in November of 31 federal charges and Linda Kaufman of 30 counts.

"You are an arrogant individual, you don't recognize what you have done is wrong," District Judge Monti Belot told Arlan Kaufman. "You see yourself as a victim of some massive conspiracy."

But Belot showed some leniency for Linda Kaufman, agreeing with Wichita psychologist Ted Moeller that she had a dependent personality and was manipulated by her husband.

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